Writing and raising children in the leafy London suburbs

If I was an evil capitalist looking to come up with an evil scheme to brainwash children into becoming good little consumers then I could sit back with a sense of a job well done after inventing Shopkins.

In fact, they’re so evil that I can’t find a site (there’s no Wikipedia page) that explains what they are without trying to sell you some.

Non-parents – you will be astonished and appalled.

Parents – your children may already have been assimilated by the unstoppable Shopkins.

These are Shopkins: small collectable plastic figures, all based on things you can buy at the shops.

Think about that for a minute: children are flocking to the shops to spend their pocket money on replicas of things you can buy at the shops.

It’s so warped it boggles the mind!

Amber has been well and truly caught by them – hook, line and sinker. In the mornings she’ll watch YouTube unboxing videos, writing down all of the names and comment on the videos (carefully supervised by me, of course!). She’s spending most of her pocket money on these things and is asking for some sort of display case thing which costs £50 (no, she’s not getting it).

Just to reiterate: she wants to buy plastic replicas of actual things that you can buy at the shops.

All of you people are freaking nuts! Get over it! It’s just a toy! I’m thanking my lucky stars right now that my parents weren’t as warped and crazy as you are! I’m an adult and if I had a kid, I’d buy her all the shopkins she wanted, with no questions asked.

Sorry to break it to ya, but you might just be the “warped and crazy” one – as you say. The point isn’t that they are toys and people are complaining about buying them for their kids. The real issue is that they are one of the purest forms of childhood consumer brainwashing I have seen in recent years. The kids will grow up thinking that the big box retailers are their friends, and it is telling them that spending money will make them happy – so spend more.

We all inhabit a house on the edge of London, and I make a living as a copywriter in the centre of town.

It's been a turbulent few years - tragedy struck early in 2011 when my younger brother died very suddenly and unexpectedly. We're still recovering from that.
My dad had a heart transplant in 2008. He's still alive and doing very well indeed.